The world of toxicology, chemistry and occupational health has evolved under the influence of the US litigation industry and poisoned by the activist scientists acting from the main strategies coming from the Collegium Ramazzini and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Much of the science these fields have produced over the last decade have been for US tort lawyers to use in mass tort lawsuits with funding often coming from complex webs of fiscal sponsors and dark donor advised funds.

The US litigation industry has shaped scientific research to produce court-ready evidence. On several occasions, I have looked into how academics working as litigation consultants developed a concept they called “adversarial regulation” where scientists would work with the US litigation industry to file an endless number of lawsuits to force corporations to change behaviour in a way they had been unable to as regulatory scientists working in US agencies. I have also referred to this as the La Jolla Playbook and the Tobacconisation of Industry.

We are living in an era of litigation-led science in the fields of chemicals, pesticides, food additives and processed food, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels and emerging technologies where researchers are either investing in studies to cast doubt on the safety of everyday substances or conducting tests to comply with new, stricter regulatory demands. It is rare to have research now dedicated to discovery and innovation. It’s not worth the risk. The litigation-led market for scientific research trades in fear, doubt and uncertainty, in small portions to be presented to angry juries.

Retractiveness

There have been a recent spate of highly celebrated retractions of academic papers, with activist groups claiming that industry involvement had somehow tainted the findings. Retractions normally were meant to occur when evidence emerged in published papers of poor calculations, faulty methodology or research integrity issues. Now it just seems that being associated with industry is enough for papers to be retracted.

There are many papers that have had some level of industry involvement (via industry data, researchers, funding…) but when research is producing information that challenges Predatort lawsuits, where billions in settlements are on the line, then these papers become targets for retraction. What the media and NGOs failed to realise was that the beneficiaries of these retractions were the tort lawyers pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Two recent retractions were related to evidence defending the safety of glyphosate and talc, at a time when these substances are facing hundreds of thousands of lawsuits.

• A paper entitled “Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans” by Williams et al. (2000), published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, presented evidence that glyphosate was safe. It relied on unpublished industry data and from that, Naomi Oreskes, a key architect in the tobacconisation/litigation strategy (and herself, paid by the litigation industry), argued that Monsanto was involved in ghostwriting the paper. That was enough for the editor of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, Martin van den Berg, to retract the paper even though the authors had acknowledged Monsanto’s involvement. Even EFSA stated there was no issue of concern with the industry involvement.
• The Lancet retracted a paper from 1977 that threw doubt on the risks of talc because the anonymous author was claimed to have consulted for J&J. In the 1970s, it was not unusual for journals to publish anonymous commentaries and there was nothing controversial about the statements made in the paper. The retraction was based on a report by two academics who have consulted for law firms suing J&J. 

It is clear then that working as a consultant for industry is unacceptable, but working as a consultant for the litigation industry is perfectly fine. Kudos to the litigation industry. They did very well to have their on-book scientists get papers retracted that challenged the evidence they could use in court. Why hasn’t anyone noticed the Predatort special interests at work behind these retractions?

Setting a New Standard for Retractions

If the new standard for retractions entails that industry involvement (via data, researchers or funding) is enough to retract an academic paper, then this should apply to all industries. Let’s not forget that these Ramazzini/IARC scientists, who have been earning lucrative payouts from the US litigation industry, have not only been publishing evidence their Predatort paymasters can use in courts, but they also have been producing litigation-friendly research methodologies.

For example, a group of activists from the Ramazzini/IARC scientific circle published a paper entitled “Key Characteristics of Carcinogens as a Basis for Organizing Data on Mechanisms of Carcinogenesis” in 2016 that was then integrated in 2019 into the revision of the Preamble to the IARC Monographs – the guidance document on how IARC can determine carcinogenicity.

The objective of the scientists behind this new methodology is to create an easy, “objective” checklist to link certain effects from chemicals, like causing inflammation, to causing cancer. It is such a general checklist that it allowed scientists meeting in IARC to attribute anything to causing any cancer. The last article in this SlimeGate series looked into the weakness of this new litigation-approved research methodology.

This is exactly what the US litigation industry needed – a methodology that could not only sufficiently link any chemical to any cancer, but one that was both simple enough for a jury to understand and yet seeming to sound technical and appear supported by actual research.

This convenient methodology was recently used by IARC to support the tens of thousands of outstanding lawsuits in the US against J&J on talc. Prior to the third IARC monograph on talc, published in 2025, IARC could only conclude that talc contaminated with asbestos could be linked to certain cancers. Now with the new Ten Key Characteristics cancer checklist methodology, lawyers could safely conclude that any talc could cause any cancer (even though many scientists on the IARC panel apparently rejected that new classification given the lack of any additional evidence). This immediately unlocked tens of thousands of talc lawsuits waiting for sufficient evidence.

The article by Smith et al. that established the Ten Key Characteristics was clearly written for the benefit of the litigation industry – an industry that earns trillions of dollars by preying on its victims. The lead author, Martyn T Smith, acknowledged that he has received funding from the US litigation industry. Smith is being far too modest here. In an earlier SlimeGate investigation, it was concluded that Smith has pocketed millions of dollars as a litigation consultant (and even setting up a research body, CERT, inside of a law firm). The idea of a reducing carcinogenicity to ten key characteristics germinated out of an IARC working group where ten of the 19 participants had worked for the US litigation industry. They knew what they were doing, and for whom.

By the standards of the retraction of the Williams et al. paper, that had acknowledged industry support in the publication of a paper that would have benefited industry, the Smith et al. paper on the Ten Key Characteristics of Carcinogens also involved industry support (and from which a major American industry is directly benefiting). There is little doubt in a world unshackled by double-standards and hypocrisy, that the Smith litigation industry paper should be retracted according to the standards these same scientists celebrated with the earlier retraction.

But there’s more.

One of the authors of the Ten Key Characteristics paper was Christopher Portier, a Collegium Ramazzini fellow as well as a frequent IARC panel member, leader and one-time visiting scholar. In the 2016 paper, Portier submitted no declaration of interests but it was later revealed, in a deposition under oath, that Portier at that time this paper was being produced, was paid handsomely by the US litigation industry and was working directly with several law firms on a large number of lawsuits that would benefit from the use of this new IARC key characteristic methodology. Not only was Portier hiding this conflict of interest from the Smith et al. paper, but also from the many global campaign activities he had led in the activist / Predatort battle to ban glyphosate.

By the standards of the retraction of the anonymous talc commentary from 1977, later revealed to be written by a J&J consultant, the Smith et al. paper on the Ten Key Characteristics should be retracted for failing to reveal the information that Christopher Portier was secretly consulting for the US litigation industry that stood to benefit from the outcome of this paper.

The Hypocrisy Hypothesis (…again)

But who am I kidding? No one is going to retract a paper on the basis of consistent standards if involves defending fairness for the chemical industry. All of the authors of the Key Characteristics papers have a strong bias, and longstanding experience, fighting against the chemical industry. As mentioned above, ten of the scientists involved in developing the Ten Key Characteristics have been employed by the US litigation industry and are too blinded by their lucrative consulting fees to realise that they themselves have conflicts of interest (ie, they are also merely well-paid industry shills).

As they believe they are doing the work of angels, they will never see the hypocrisy of their actions. While these activist scientists celebrate the retraction of research papers that involve certain maligned industries, they could never accept that their own lucrative contracts are equally tainted or that they are contributing to a corrupt, non-transparent industry that extorts billions through deceptive means. They could never accept that their work on the Ten Key Characteristics of Carcinogens was feeding into the profits, opportunism and deception of these slimeball Predatorts.

Or maybe they just put their heads down and took the money.

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Since 2018, SlimeGate has been one of the few documents, a living research text, trying to expose the corruption and lies behind the litigation industry. If you enjoyed this read (free with no ads) or the entire SlimeGate exposé, why not support The Risk-Monger via Patreon? Become a Gold-Monger patron from 5 € / $ per month and get David’s newsletter.